- and on and on it goes - interwoven with the Google Earth search on screen, as Saroo carelessly continues flicking the cursor, saying goodbye to the search as his past and his memories disintegrate into fragments - [More images that equate to a middle finger, "burn it all down" mentality.]

He pulls the laptop onto his thighs. Something about that COLOR. Still as the Sphinx, he stares at the screen." [On the one hand, it seems like coincidence. On the other, it follows naturally from the destructive behavior. Like a phoenix rising from ashes.]

WHAT I'VE LEARNED: The AIL moment is a turning point.

The recovery (or not) moment after AIL can be wild or "coincidental", but must be truthful.

Lion (2016)
by Luke Davies
Based on the book A Long Way Home, by Saroo Brierley

This script was written this director and cast, some of whom had done the play.

It delivered what was needed to tell the story (characters, tone, mood, etc.), and little of what is not (ex. details on the house).

Note how the writer lays out the essentials (character, conflict), i.e., Rose's contradictions let us know that Troy is a unreliable narrator. All else is imagination.

ex. "ROSE: I told him if he wasn't the marrying kind, then move out they way so the marrying kind could find me.

TROY: That's what she told me. "Nigger, you in my way. You blocking the view! Move out the way so I can find me a husband." I though it over two or three days. Come back -

ROSE: Ain't no two or three days nothing. You was back the same night.

TROY: Come back, told her... "Okay, baby...but I'm gonna buy me a banty rooster and put him out there in the backyard...and when he see a stranger come, he'll flap his wings and crow..." Look here, Bono, I could watch the front door by myself...it was that back door I was worried about.

ROSE: Troy, you ought not talk like that. Troy ain't doing nothing but telling a lie.

TROY: Only thing is...when we first got married...forget the rooster...we ain't had no yard!"

WHAT I'VE LEARNED: Forget "rules." Use whatever works to convey your story.

(Ok, ok, there are guidelines that might help, but I don't like calling them 'rules.')